


A Warm Place

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:12:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Qui and Obi spend quality time together in the course of<br/>a trip.  A spot of voyeurism occurs.  Obi-Wan goes in for body<br/>art.  Certain possibilities are raised.  Sequel to "Floating<br/>World."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Warm Place

**Author's Note:**

> The body calligraphy is based on poems by Ono no Komachi (c. 850  
> AD), and the translation structures were created by Jane  
> Hirshfield in her book, "Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of  
> Poetry."
> 
> Title filched from Nine Inch Nails. Inspiration filched from  
> same.
> 
> Obi-Wan quotes from the Dhammapada (9:145 and 15:205), though the  
> lines have been slightly altered to fit the context.

  
In my new robe  
this morning --  
someone else.

\- Basho (trans. Lucien Stryk)

*****

Later, he remembered fires.

He slept in one of the out-buildings of the guard station on  
Brikalla.  It was only a loose wooden shack with too many drafts,  
made to keep out heavy, vertical rain rather than driven snow.    
There was no glass in the windows, and the shutters were slatted,  
so that while they broke the back of the wind, they failed to  
keep it out.  In the mornings there was snow piled in the  
corners of the room.

At intervals through the building there were fire-bowls, but the  
light they cast was brilliant, and at night, they were  
extinguished.  The only heat came from the barrel-stove in the  
sleep-room.  Muted coals in the pre-dawn hours.  In place of  
individual beds, there was a ledge padded with furs and blankets  
that ran the length of the room.  The guards slept curled  
together, heads toward the fire bin, like soft litter animals.

He was an outsider, though, and they never invited him into those  
fetal embraces.  He slept an arm-length away, adequately covered  
in his Jedi robe and the fur layers but always concentrating to  
preserve his body heat.  It was he who woke in the night and  
stirred the barrel coals, added more wood, and paced the length  
of the room, touching the too-thin walls and feeling the thrust  
of the wind against them.  

Stillness frightened him more.  When the wind didn't blow, the  
room was filled only with the guards' breathing and small cracks  
as the wood burned down.  Everything silvered by dawn.  He'd  
woken with frost in his hair, watched as always by his alien-  
curious companions.

There'd never been a winter like that, he was told.  The guards  
were willing to talk to him in daylight, while they were walking  
the borders.  They were used to the snow, but even they found the  
cold oppressive.  He could understand that, at least.  Every time  
he inhaled to speak, his teeth hurt, and he thought that the skin  
of his hands might be permanently raw.  A long-term posting there  
wasn't something he could imagine.  He'd been five weeks on the  
frontier, the ceremonial watcher whose presence there smoothed  
the treaty negotiations three hundred miles south.  He watched,  
he waited, and nothing came except snow and the increasingly dim  
light through the spreading pines.  

It was already dark when he came back to the station.  The guards  
had eaten earlier and were sitting on the floor near the fire  
bowls, playing dice games and drinking tea.  Someone handed him a  
bowl of soup and some bread.  He ate at the abandoned table,  
watched occasionally by the others but more often ignored.  When  
he was finished, he retrieved one of the handful of texts he'd  
brought with him and read until the fire bowls were extinguished.  

The delicacy of pure mathematics swallowed the cold and the ashes  
that settled on every surface, the quiet voices of men disputing  
the value of a throw.  Numbers moved in on one another and  
changed slowly.  All the shapes of the room reduced to the  
geometry of fractals.  Even after the lights were out, he stayed  
with one hand gripping the edge of the data board and the other  
tracing numerals out on the rough wood surface of the table.

He had to find his way to bed by touch.  The door to the sleeping  
room was unbarred, but he didn't know if they had been waiting on  
him or someone else.  If a messenger was coming, he might not  
arrive until late in the night, and no one would lock the door  
against him.  

His robe whispered against the floor-mats as he padded through  
the dark space, only occasionally catching firelight in its  
folds.  No one flipped back a top cover in invitation to him.    
When he was out of the guards' reach, he leaned back against the  
ledge to pull off his boots, crawled into bed fully clothed, and  
buried himself in the almost-warm layers.

Fire-flare for a moment against his eyelids, and a soft crack.    
Drifting on the edge of the night.

Fingers against the back of his neck.

"Obi-Wan."

He'd fallen asleep, but he didn't know when.  He had to uncurl  
himself from the ball he'd rolled into, and only then could he  
look up into his Master's face.  Qui-Gon Jinn crouched in front  
of the sleeping-ledge.  He was impossibly huge in that compact  
space, so that Obi-Wan had to adjust his bearings to include him.

"Master."  Mahstah.  His accent sounded like a child's in the  
room's stillness.  His neck still tingled where his Master had  
touched him.

"The negotiations concluded yesterday morning.  There was a  
Republic shuttle making the north run, and they offered to bring  
me this far."  Delicate smile, almost hidden in the shadows of  
his beard.  "Hello Padawan."

"Mmm."  He wasn't awake, not really.  There had been no urgency  
in the touch that roused him, and the explanation would be as  
valid in the morning, when he could understand it.  Now, he was  
only very tired, and chilled where patches of bare skin brushed  
the air.  To his right, the guards had simply admitted the  
additional bodies of the couriers, shifting a little to make room  
and then falling back to sleep.  It seemed like such a good idea.

It only took one motion of his arm for Obi-Wan to flip the  
sleeping-fur back.  The invitation was traditional and innocent,  
and Qui-Gon would almost certainly take the offer for what it  
was.  For a moment, shadowed eyes pinned him where he lay, then  
the man stood, making a swirl of dark cloth that blocked the glow  
of the barrel fire.  In a handful of simple movements, he removed  
his boots and swung a knee onto the sleep-ledge, then settled  
beside his apprentice.  Obi-Wan twisted the bedclothes around  
them both and settled his head against his Master's chest.  It  
wasn't the fetal curl he'd made earlier, but the warmth of a  
second body was Force-given in the chill.

Qui-Gon's clothes smelled of closed spaces and smoke, and they  
were very cold.  Obi-Wan wondered, vaguely, how long the older  
man had stood outside to chill himself like that, how much longer  
he'd crouched over his padawan before he woke.  The cloth warmed  
under his touch almost immediately, but the cold seemed to  
transfer to the palms of his hands, tingling on the bare skin for  
a long time while he settled into the angles of the larger body.    
He was barely half-conscious, and all his instincts were focussed  
on nestling.  Qui-Gon's clothes and Qui-Gon's body making a  
single, comforting unit in combination with his own.

***

Qui-Gon said, "I thought we would take the river-barge.  I  
haven't given you enough attention lately, and the journey would  
give us some unstructured time together."

Obi-Wan stood on the guard station's porch and watched snow  
fragments sift down from the trees and the roof.  Earlier, he'd  
performed katas on the curiously-bare ground.  Hours of wind had  
swept the powdered ice into concentrated drifts against buildings  
and between the trees, exposing huge sections of earth.  Dried  
grass making flares of brown and red.  He'd finished, turned, and  
seen his Master watching him from the shadowed door.

Just a bare moment to settle himself into that gaze.  His status  
as Jedi Padawan meant that he was always being watched.  He  
waited for corrections, calmly, absorbing both his master's face  
and the Living Force around him, alive even in this frozen world  
of forest and clearing.  Nothing came.  Qui-Gon only nodded to  
him, half a smile that Obi-Wan answered with a bow low enough to  
let his braid sweep within a hand's breadth of the ground.    
Glorying like a warm animal in that small approval.

A tiny, welcoming gesture had brought him to his Master's side,  
and he'd grounded himself there, waiting undemandingly for  
whatever Qui-Gon had to tell him.

He wondered about this strange little world that had never been  
colonized.  Space-farers had arrived there nearly a hundred years  
ago and had been met by a civilization in its iron age that was  
organized, territorial, and shockingly unsurprised to see them.    
Later, the Republic had learned that the Brikallans were  
astronomers, talented lens-makers who had been bending light to  
their will for generations and who had catalogued the nearby  
portions of the Republic for several centuries.  They were  
established merchants, and more than willing to grant trade  
enclaves, but they had allowed little or no technological  
encroachment into their society proper.  Brikalla remained the  
only pre-industrial society in the Republic; what mechanization  
they had was used only for creation of complex clockwork toys  
sold in the Palace-sector of the capital.

In the past fifty cycles, there had been three hostile attempts  
to incorporate the planet into one of the larger commercial  
powers.  All three had failed, but after the third Brikalla had  
appealed to the Senate for economic exclusivity.  Jedi protectors  
were sent for the period between the granting of that right and  
the time of its becoming law.  One in the capital to smooth the  
paperwork and final arrangements, one walking the ancient border  
between Brikalla's agrarian society and its nomads.  Days or even  
weeks travel apart, but still close enough that Obi-Wan could  
feel his master's Force-signature simply by stilling himself and  
reaching for it.

That signature swelled around him now, a whisper of energy that  
sifted through his clothes and hair like an affectionate touch.    
He found himself leaning into it, cat-arching back to catch the  
feeling's edges.  If Qui-Gon noticed, he didn't comment.  He  
hadn't turned the single time he spoke; the landscape seemed to  
have absorbed his whole attention.

***

Grey sky in the last hour before full darkness.  Obi-Wan had  
wanted to make the border-walk once more, anchor it in his brain  
so that later he'd be able to draw up all the parts of the  
landscape and the light.  He'd done it before as a memory  
exercise, reconstructed for himself precisely some place he'd  
visited three or four years ago.  Patterns of tree-branches  
projected onto a tiled floor that he could use for a meditation-  
image in the frozen hold of some emergency transport.

His Master had let him go without question.  They'd eaten  
together and discussed the Force-structures of abstract  
mathematics.  He thought there might be something inherently  
mystic about the shifting absolutes of numbers, a reality without  
a form, and he'd been digging through calculus and philosophy  
texts for half a year in search of some previously-made  
connection between the two.  He was only gradually realizing that  
it wasn't there, and that when he was ready Qui-Gon would  
probably suggest the subject as a long-term project for him.  

Brushing his fingers over the unfinished wood frame of the  
guard house.  Reaching for the    
//cold-smell     smoke    luminous Force-clarity//    
of this place.  

Years as a Force-user gave him the reflexes to cushion the door  
before it could make a sound.  He hadn't realized that anyone  
would still be in the dining room.  The space was only dimly lit,  
and warmed by a single brazier beside the table.  One of the  
guards was stretched face-down on the unfinished wood, most of  
the way to asleep, with his face pillowed on his arms.  The pale-  
gold surface of his skin was vaguely luminous.

The man seated at his side was almost fully clothed, only bare-  
footed and bare-armed.  One blunt-fingered hand rested in the  
small of the exposed back; the other stirred a glass well with  
the tip of a brush.  He lifted the brush, finally, and touched it  
to a shoulder blade, traced a narrow, precise line down for the  
length of a finger, then looped gracefully upward.  He'd done it  
several times before Obi-Wan realized he was writing.  The brush-  
strokes gradually formed symbols from the Brikallan alphabet,  
running down both sides of the slightly hollowed spine.

Obi-Wan translated the symbols automatically, letting his brain  
sort the information while his attention remained glued on what  
he was watching.  Just once, the writing man bent and ran the tip  
of his tongue along unpainted flesh.

  
On the left side

KUROKAMI   NO / MIDARE        MO    SHIRAZU  
black hair 's   messiness    (obj.) without knowing  
                tangling            without caring

UCHIFUSEBA    /     MAZU    KAKIYARISHI /  
when lying prone    first    stroked  
                    clear  
HITO    ZO  KOISHIKI  
person  !   longing

On the right side

ITO   SEMETE   /   KOISHIKI   TOKI  WA /  
very  extremely    longing    time   --

UBATAMA    NO / YORU   NO  KOROMO    O /  
hiogi nut  's   night  's  clothing  (obj.)

KAESHITE             ZO       KIRU  
turned inside out    !        wear

  
Even after years of exercises in deciphering languages and  
poetry, it took him long minutes to assemble anything meaningful  
from what he'd read.  Only when he withdrew his attention from  
the men at the table was he able to decipher the inscription.

Lying alone                     When my desire  
my black hair tangled,          grows too fierce  
uncombed,                       I wear my bedclothes  
I long for the one              inside out,  
who touched it first.           dark as the night's rough husk.

Chewed wood painting over skin.  Obi-Wan knew he should withdraw,  
but he was fascinated, and his feet were rooted.  While he  
watched, the blunt fingers finished the last character and set  
down the brush, then traced delicately over the ribcage to rest  
on the guardsman's heavy, oddly still shoulders.

He hadn't realized that there were lovers amongst the guards.    
And in fact when he thought about it, he realized that the  
calligrapher was no one he recognized, that he must have been  
part of the courier party that had arrived with Qui-Gon.  The  
touches between the two didn't speak of a new relationship,  
though.  They must have been lovers long before this visit.  And  
if the other was a messenger, then they must live apart for most  
of the year.  The thought stilled him.  He was grateful that he  
had not interrupted, and ashamed of watching what was almost  
certainly a too-rare encounter between them.

When they began to make love in earnest he shook himself and  
withdrew.  There was no way he could walk to the sleeping chamber  
without rousing the house, so he stepped back outside, and  
muffled the swing and impact of the door.  The snow had stopped,  
but there was a low, insulating cloud-layer that still blocked  
out the stars.  He walked along the cleared paths as far as the  
boulders that were clustered above the river gorge, and lifted  
himself up to sit on one of them.  Wrapped his robe more tightly  
around his body and waited.

Even in the cold, Obi-Wan found himself drifting.  Sleep would be  
dangerous considering the chill and his precarious perch, but he  
managed to slip into a surface meditation.  Let the image of the  
two in the dining room resolve itself for him.  When he rose out  
of the trance, he was calmer, and the light arousal that had  
clung to him had dissipated.  He sat watching the guard house  
until the light sifting through its shutters died, then walked  
back.  When he opened the door again, there was no one on the  
other side of it, and he was able to walk to the sleep chamber  
without disturbing anyone but himself.

***

Qui-Gon had described the barges to him, and he'd understood them  
intellectually, but he'd still envisioned something that more  
resembled a broad, shallow-bottomed boat.  His Master's  
description hadn't been a lesson, not precisely.  Not something  
it would save his life to know.  Just words surrounding him in  
the darkness when he'd finally come to bed.

He had time to come to a full understanding of the craft in the  
first two days they spent aboard it.  It wasn't a boat in the way  
he understood boats.  A raft, rather, with stabilizing pontoons  
on each side and a delicate rudder-system that allowed it to  
follow the gorge-currents rather than striking the cliffs.  The  
deck was flat and uncontained; only barrelled supplies provided  
something of a barrier between living bodies and the water.    
There was tiny shelter at the back where the boat-man lived.    
Iron pan in mid-deck in which they could build the only fire.

It was an engineless craft, and he couldn't imagine how it  
travelled upstream.  He'd asked, finally, entirely bemused by the  
impossibility of it.  It didn't, the boatman told him.  Each  
barge was constructed in the glacial forests and floated down to  
the capital, where it was dismantled and the wood re-used.    
North-bound trade moved by trade-road or by sea.  Seventeen trips  
in the boatman's career, coloured by the liquid green and  
bordering rock.

Obi-Wan had been sensitive to light changes since he was an  
Initiate, and he found now that daylight tended to rouse him even  
before the boatman rolled out of his own blankets.  The barge was  
lashed to a series of iron rings driven into the cliff wall; it  
shifted lightly under him as small river-waves rolled under it.    
He was starting to realize the extent to which this was a water-  
country.  Everything grew in ankle-deep pools.  Even the forests  
at the river's origins soaked in an impossibly shallow lake that  
extended for hundreds of miles and stayed frozen for almost two  
thirds of the year.  Blues and greens farther south; ice-blue on  
the frozen edges.  He'd patrolled one of the few dry places, and  
even there the norm had been torrential rainfall.

The unexpected frost coloured everything in the gorge.  Steam off  
the water condensed on the rock face and froze.  It only took a  
light touch with the Force for Obi-Wan to locate the geothermal  
vents that heated the river so that not even the surface would  
freeze.  Such a thin crust on this planet.  The water around him  
steamed constantly.  Only the Jedi-cloak kept him dry; he found  
he was unwilling to strip it off for more than a few moments at a  
time.  Only to wash down fast in the hard air, and later to keep  
its sleeves out of the way while he re-built the blaze in the  
fire-pan.

He sat in front of the pan now, cupping dried leaves in his palm  
and inhaling a little while he waited for the open pot to boil.    
He wondered if the cold had penetrated his Master, if he should  
be protecting the older man a little while he captured these last  
few minutes of rest.  If he had any right to interfere in the  
body-life of a Jedi Master.

He let the water boil for half a minute before he poured the  
crushed leaves into it.  Waited after that until the colour  
changed and the tea-smell drifted to him easily.  Lifted it off  
the hook with a carefully wrapped hand and laid the pot on the  
deck boards, bowed a little over the liquid and swept the fumes  
over his face with a light, double-handed sweep.  Caffeine and  
warmth moved with it, waking him fully and reassuring him of the  
absence of danger in the drink.  The search for contamination was  
the first ritual element that Master A'aren had introduced into  
his knowledge of tea-making, and he did it now with as little  
thought as any part of his pre-dawn routine.

The boatman came forward and offered stiffened hands to the small  
fire.  Obi-Wan reached forward and closed his hands over the  
reddened ones.  He could feel the small aches of arthritis  
shivering through the Living Force, reached to calm them in pure  
reflex.  It wasn't until he released the hands and found the  
boatman staring at him that he realized that he'd been healing,  
and that the swollown joints were half the size they had been.

He dipped and handed the man a cup of tea.  Watched the fingers  
close around it and then flex as he waited for red pain that  
wasn't there.  

Small nod.  "Thank you, Jedi Kenobi."

"You're welcome."  He dipped a second cup and took it with him.

His Master was still asleep, curled in the layers of blankets and  
his robe in the shelter of the cargo barrels.  Even fully awake  
as he was, Obi-Wan found he wanted to crawl back into the embrace  
he'd been cradled in while he slept.  The shared body-heat and  
Force-energy had dissipated all but the faint edges of the cold,  
to the extent that getting up had brought physical pain.  It  
would be so easy to just reinsert himself into that warmth and be  
held all through this day and the next night, to abandon his  
reading and their lessons and drift.  The boatman barely needed  
them, and in the time until the river-station, there was little  
enough to do.

"Master."  He brushed a hand over the long hair and waited for  
Qui-Gon to wake.

Qui-Gon surfaced, arched under the layers of his bedding, and sat  
up, focussed on the apprentice kneeling in front of him.  Obi-Wan  
bowed, brought the tea-cup to his lips to show it was safe to  
drink, then offered it to his Master with both hands.  Qui-Gon  
took it and drank.  Closed his eyes at the warm rush.  Before the  
cup was empty, though, he handed it back to Obi-Wan and waited  
for the younger man to finish the drink.  Stood when the tea was  
gone and walked to the fire.

Long days like that.  Obi-Wan had rarely been allowed this kind  
of intense attention from his Master in the field.  Qui-Gon made  
a place for Obi-Wan in the curve of his arm and held the younger  
man against him so that both of them kept their faces to the  
fire.  One text or another always open in the Master's lap.  Qui-  
Gon's voice warm in his ear explaining the deeper layers of    
interpretation and meaning of this latest book.

The water was always at the fringes of Obi-Wan's attention, the  
Force whispering that he should love it while he could.  His  
vision in the dry garden still nagged at him.  He'd meditated on  
it in the silence of the guard station, but it hadn't resolved  
into any more than what it was -- a fragment of a possibility  
that spoke of grief and infinite dryness.  One that made him lean  
into the shelter of his Master's robes.

And still the fire.  It got colder, and he found himself sitting  
within arm's reach of the fire basin for more than half the day.    
They slept there in the night.  Qui-Gon's body wrapped around his  
and his head on his arm, hearing the water shift under the thin  
surface of the barge.  He woke in the night and watched the coals  
glow.  His Master behind him was a solid warmth, and big hands  
stroked his chest and abdomen gently, soothing him.

***

The light was different inside the river-station.  It filtered  
through wood and glass so that in daylight, when the lamps were  
out, the indoors was a warmly-wrapped twilight.  Wooden chairs  
and benches around the common room with drying clothes thrown  
over them.  In the back, there were the sharp scents of raw  
supplies: dried vegetables, hemp sacks of seed crop, fuel oil  
stored carefully in glass sealers and arranged on the shelves.    
Radiek's soft throat-singing while she did accounts in the faint  
light that filtered in.

Two days ago, when they'd pulled the barge in to the floating  
wharf, both the vessel and mooring had been rimmed with ice.  The  
gorge had widened finally, and there was enough of a shore to  
anchor a dock and a few wooden buildings.  Obi-Wan had stepped  
off the barge and staggered for half a step before his balance  
readjusted to stable ground.  His Master hadn't touched him, but  
he could feel the warm body just behind him, watching.  He'd  
focussed on Qui-Gon's limpid self-ness instead of the change in  
footing and made the next step without falling.

Since then, it had snowed.  Huge, soft-limbed trees hung over the  
compound and sheltered it, but less and less of the ground was  
bare, and Obi-Wan was more and more grateful for the temporary  
bed he had indoors.  Even the small mat and blanket by the fire  
were luxurious after days on the river.  A dozen or more people  
slept in the common room.  He immersed again in the communal  
sleeping-life that had sheltered him since childhood, and in the  
silent minutes when he couldn't sleep he let the swelling sense  
of it fill the air around him.  Snow falling from the trees to  
hit the roof tiles.  Breath in the dark.

He drifted and woke in the small hours and rolled over, reaching  
through the Force for his Master's presence.  There beside him,  
on his side, keeping Obi-Wan's body between his own and the fire.    
The coal-shimmer flicked across the grey hair, stroked the heavy  
cheekbones and the twice-broken nose, and he reached out a hand  
to follow it.  Traced the profile and the hairline of Qui-Gon's  
beard with a fingertip, too delicately to wake the man.  Close  
enough to feel his breath.  Afterward, he laid with his head on  
an outstretched arm, just watching, until he heard Radiek stir  
and turned to look at her.  She blinked at him unfocusedly, then  
more alertly, then shrugged, turned towards the fire-warmth, and  
returned to sleep.  And he'd stayed watching her in the dark  
until the small rise of her lungs under her ribs became the focus  
for a long meditation that lasted nearly until morning.

Obi-Wan didn't know what to make of her, this river-merchant who  
watched him constantly.  A half-dozen Brikallans lived in this  
place full-time and maintained its buildings and supplies, and the  
stock rooms were hers.  The first day, he'd seen her pouring honey  
with the concentration of an elderly knight returning to a long-  
perfected exercise.  He had flickers of her presence whenever he was  
within sight of the supply house.  Grey-eyed, black-haired woman  
with long streaks of grey in her hair and black flecks in her eyes.    
Even Qui-Gon had given her the respect due to a master.  When  
Obi-Wan had hand-clasped her in greeting, his fingers had run over  
the matrimonial tattoo that coiled on the back of her hand.  

He felt her watching him in the courtyard as he did katas, and  
now in the common room, where he was curled reading by the  
fireplace.  It shook him more than it should have.  If he was to be  
Jedi, he should be able to tolerate being a curiosity.

The book refused to surrender to him, and he gave up on it  
finally.  Radiek nodded when he walked past her to the door, but  
it could have been a gesture of anything.

Outside, the chill was stronger.  There was a thin layer of snow  
on the ground, but other feet had marked a path through it that  
he was able to follow.  Higher up the cliffs, there were supposed  
to be hot springs.  He hadn't been really warm in weeks, and the  
thought of a bath in hot water, even with cold air around him, was  
irresistible.  Stillness in the air, radiating off the trees and  
projecting rocks.  Small animals shifted in the darker bush.  Higher,  
the path was marked with flat stones, and he followed these to the  
hollow in the cliffs.

His cloak made a layer of warm armour for him while he undressed.    
The stone around the bathing pools had been carved out into a  
bath a pair of benches, and there was a half-wall shielding the  
place from view.  He only let the warmth of the garment fall the  
instant before he stepped into the water, and then there was only  
time for a quick, hard flare before he sank into

//bright pain   mineral smell swelling over the rocks   hot, hot  
so hot   pleasure running up him like orgasm to twist through his  
shoulders and lock his jaw for the long seconds before he cried  
out//

Nothing had felt this singly good in as long as he could  
remember.  The steam folded around him as he stepped deeper, so  
that by the time the water brushed at his thighs he was bodily  
warm and could hesitate for a moment before sliding his genitals  
and hips under the surface.  The ecstatic pain ran up him again  
and he had to breathe through his teeth until it eased, but then  
he was able to relax, finally, and catch palmfuls of water to  
splash over his torso and shoulders.

The minerals dissolved in the water cut through to his sinuses  
and made small pains there.  He reached down to rub at his calf  
and let his face skim the liquid's surface.  The Force reaching  
out to him and he answered it without conscious thought.

. . . opening suddenly into this cave, and he was able to  
straighten, finally, and stare at the paintings of a history of  
sentients, marked out in plant-pigments and chalks and what he  
thought might be blood.  Images of caravans trailing across the  
edge of the Dune Sea, pack animals strung out behind wagons and  
what must be mechanical transports.  Hand to hand battles.    
Dances of mating.  The arc of a gliding ch'ara as it banked over  
a promontory.

He walked past these, touched them carefully, absorbing the  
Force-history embedded in them.  Stepped precisely around the  
bits of ceramic that lay on the floor, avoided the thin bones of  
desert creatures that had died to feed the planet's sentient  
life.  Brushed his mind across an early piece of metalwork and  
felt its use as a carving tool and weapon and art instrument.

  
Then he came into the lower cavern and learned why the Jawas had  
told him that this place was sacred.

Water slipped away for half a mile across the dark.  He could  
feel it reaching down below the level of the desert to an almost-  
forgotten water table.  There were no pictures here, and no  
debris.  Even the entrance would have been impossible to find if  
the little ones hadn't told him where it was.  It was a fortune,  
the most water in one place on the whole planet.  Not a thing for  
outsiders to know.  They'd told him of it, finally, after fifteen  
years of caring for their injured, and he hadn't realized until  
he stepped it that it was the most valuable thing they had.

Shimmer of the water in the Force-light he conjured.  Afraid to  
touch it and needing to touch it because he hadn't been really  
wet since he came here, and they'd given this to him so he could  
reach out and sink his hand into its depth . . .

  
Obi-Wan pulled himself together and felt snow fragments brush  
across his shoulders.  Quickly, he bent his knees and submerged  
himself until only his nose and eyes were above the water, then  
tilted his head back to soak his hair.  It felt so good, and he  
was still drifting on the edge of the vision.  He could only hold  
onto images of desert and water and gratitude now, but he thought  
more might come back with silence and meditation.  He got out,  
finally, and wrapped himself in his cloak until he was dry enough  
to dress and walk back.

***

"Where is your lover, Jedi Obi-Wan?"

"Hmm?"  Radiek had handed him tea when he came in, and shooed him  
to the fire.  Her fingers on the back of his neck told him what  
she thought of his running around in the cold with wet hair, but  
he refused to flinch from her.  She'd turned his chin up so she  
could look at him, then disappeared, come back with the wooden-  
handled teapot and a second cup for herself.  Then sat, curled  
her feet under and watched him until his drink was half-gone.

"Where is your lover?  He has been gone since early morning."

"Master Qui-Gon went up the cliffs.  He said he wanted to  
exercise and meditate and . . . oh, I'm sorry, Lady, I believe we  
haven't been clear.  He isn't my lover."  

She cocked her head.  "May I ask you why?  I think he loves you a  
great deal."

Obi-Wan paused, centred himself.  "Those who make channels for  
water control the waters; makers of arrows make the arrows  
straight; carpenters control their timber; and Jedi control their  
own minds."  Pause.  He'd answered similar questions before.    
Then as now he'd tried not to be cryptic, and failed, and reached  
for words less rooted in the code.  "I'm not ready.  If I am to  
offer anything to a lover, I need to possess myself first."

"You do not yet?"  She leaned forward and refilled his teacup.

He sighed.  "I do.  But he remains my Master, and to a great  
extent the centre of my universe, and to make him my lover is not  
a thing to be done lightly."  Sipped at his tea.  "Jedi  
relationships are delicate things.  Some Jedi prefer to live  
alone.  Others live in extended bond-units, like large families,  
with teachers and new students and old students and current  
lovers all sharing space.  Master Qui-Gon and I are closer to the  
former.  There has only ever been the two of us since I became  
his student."  Thinking of the quiet ghost of the failed padawan,  
and of the faceless lovers whom it had taken him so long to  
recognize.  No other strong presences had ever invaded.  And  
their living-place was open-air as often as not, and only  
infrequently on Coruscant.  "My Master has had lovers  
occasionally, but they have never joined us."

He flushed then, and bit his tongue a little in self-reprimand.    
Wondered how long it had been since he'd had a friend outside the  
order, that he was willing to offer these secrets to a stranger.    
But another Jedi would never have questioned him.

"And your lovers, Jedi Obi-Wan?"

"My fantasies take up relatively little space."  She gave him a  
long look that demanded to know how old he was.  He offered one  
back of blank serenity.  He was willing to let her read his  
remark any way she chose.  Rather less willing to explain the  
intricacies of coming to adulthood as a Jedi, the hours of  
meditation and gradual centring in and understanding of his body.

Radiek kept watching, but he chose not to answer her, and  
gradually the demanding look withdrew.  She stood, touched his  
hand briefly, and went back to her accounts, leaving him with the  
teapot by the fire.  When the light struck her shirt, he thought  
he could see something dark and almost moving underneath, like  
the twist of a snake.

Obi-Wan set the dishes aside and folded himself down on the warm  
boards.  His cloak was within reach, folded over the chair he'd  
been sitting in, but here at least he didn't need it.  Heat  
streaked out from the coals more thinly than it had in the water,  
but it kept him steady while he calmed his breathing and  
heartbeat.  He focussed in and stroked the Living Force, let it  
swell around him and gradually strip away his layers of conscious  
thought.  At the back of his mind, there was the knowledge of  
Radiek's presence, and Qui-Gon's continued well-being, but  
neither rose to more than a whisper, and he was able to simply  
breathe.

It was darker when he surfaced from his meditation, and there  
were more people in the room, though none close.  Two men at the  
table, Radiek's husband with his back to the wall so that the  
remaining light flooded past him and struck his wife.  Her eyes  
on Qui-Gon, and Qui-Gon's on him.

Obi-Wan stood and bowed to his Master where the man sat reading  
by the fire, almost within arm's reach.  Crossed to stand above  
the river merchant.  The light angled through her shirt, and he  
could see the patterns marked out on her skin vividly, even  
through the fabric.  Her husband nodded to him and stepped past,  
caught the woman's eye for a moment and offered her a look that  
Obi-Wan couldn't read.

He reached and traced the line of colour to where it disappeared  
into her sleeve.  Traces of plant-life and colour that were the  
fringe details of a larger pattern.  She didn't flinch from the  
touch.  Watched him with eyes like his Master's until he spoke.

"Could you do this for me?"

***

The storeroom table was built in the same design as those of the  
guard station, slabs of wood laid together and polished until the  
most dangerous edges were rubbed away.  The smoked glass of the  
oil lamp in the corner shot light flickers across the wood's  
irregularities.  He hadn't planned on stretching so nearly naked  
across that roughness, but the discomfort was minimal, and he was  
able to still himself under her touch.

Radiek's hard fingers ran alongon his ribcage and collarbone,  
probed the muscles that traced down his back.  He felt her  
reading the variations in skin texture and the places where soft  
hairs changed the surface texture.  

"Do you understand why you are doing this, young one?" she asked.

"I do."  He could remember the body-marks of knights in the  
Temple, could remember being an Initiate and brazenly asking to  
have the marks explained.  The patience of a knight who traced  
each tattoo and scarification, explained how she'd chosen each of  
them to mark a decision or moment of change.  Her knighting had  
been a formal act -- her hair had been cut and she had ritually  
parted from her Master.  Three weeks later, in the midst of her  
first mission, she'd finally woken and for the first time not  
reached for that comforting presence.  At the end of the mission,  
she found a tattoo artist in the under-level of the spaceport.  
She came home with the contrasting red and white flowers of the  
high meditation garden marked on the insides of her wrists.

He'd had the discretion, at least, not to ask her why she'd  
chosen that design.  The explanation, if she'd even chosen to  
give it, would most likely have been longer than the story she'd  
told him and more complex than he would at the time have been  
able to process.

"And you are sure of the design?"

"Yes."

He'd seen hers when she led him in here.  She lit the lamp and  
undressed with her back to him.  The oil flared and he could make  
out the coiling dragon that ran from her shoulders to the tops of  
her thighs.  Then as the light steadied and spread, the details  
of sentient life that surrounded it.  Gesturing beings buried in  
plant life.  Scales suggesting a second dragon contained within  
her body.  The image shifted as she turned, almost disconnected  
from her skin, and he saw the scales traced over her breasts and  
belly, just brushing the tops of her thighs in front.  And she  
only watched him while he studied her, and dressed again only  
when he nodded to say he had seen as much as he could.

"And the placing?"  More firmly, this time.

"Yes.  Most Jedi tattoo their hands first, but mine marks a  
private decision rather than a public break.  And it is to remind  
me of the possessor of my body."  He twisted up to look at her,  
but she smoothed him back on the table.

"All right, young one.  Lie back and relax.  Let me work."

He'd been naked before, but rarely in front of a stranger, and  
the touch of this woman's hands so close to the centre of him was  
something he had to consciously release.  Out of his line of  
vision, he could feel her shaving away the few hairs that spread  
so far out on his hip, soothing the skin afterward with a touch  
and something delicately cold.

It was going to take hours to do it correctly; most of the night.    
Obi-Wan let himself fall again into his own breathing, moving  
deeper than the flashes of pain that ran up him as the first  
needle punctured the skin.  His breath and his heartbeat, his  
body reacting a little to the foreignness of the ink.  Breathing  
deeper until he had only the faintest sense of the burning in the  
hollow of his left hip and the weight of Radiek's hand high up on  
his leg.

He drifted into the vision more delicately this time.  What he  
gained first was the delicate light that lingered after sunset,  
long blues and their reflections in sand hollows.  Then gradually  
stars, and a knowledge of the constellations they formed, then  
the rules that let him navigate by them.  A perfect understanding  
of where he stood, in the middle of this flat place where the  
dunes didn't reach.  Hardpan still forming mirages in the almost-  
dark.

Desert cold pushed against the remains of his cloak.  It was old,  
not his, one of Qui's, cut down to let him move freely and  
slightly ragged where he hadn't hemmed it well.  His own  
raggedness had gradually brought some of the others to trust him.    
Sometimes Jawas came and asked to be healed.  Occasionally Sand  
People did.  He'd come to expect the ringing of glass with each  
of his movements, bottles in his pockets striking each other even  
when he only carried basic analgesics and antibiotics.  Hours in  
the front room of his house coaxing the infection-killers out of  
small desert plants.  The smell of their leaves stayed under his  
nails for weeks.

The moon rose while he waited, thinly luminous after the daytime  
brilliance of two suns.  He'd only been out here a few times  
since he'd settled on the edge of the Dune Sea, fifteen years  
ago.  The desert dwellers had no interest in a place this empty;  
their gift to him had been the water.  It was only the outworlder  
in him that reached into empty places.  There were half a dozen  
living scents coming on this wind.  Different sand-layers and  
traces of moisture, plants from the highlands, herd animals in  
the distance.  Wells.

Before he died, he was going to understand how winds could carry  
a trace scent for hundreds of miles.  Why they swirled in the  
high atmosphere and fell suddenly.  How the sand could rise into  
air that seemed breathless and become a storm in the time it took  
to rip his attention away from whatever lichens he was scraping  
together.

A pair of Sand People lurked at the edge of his vision, their  
Banthas quietly nose to tail.  Their stillness, watching him.    
Waiting to see whether he would go back or whether he had finally  
gone mad and intended to keep walking until the desert swallowed  
him.

The Obi-Wan in the river-station surfaced through the vision  
slowly, finally asserting himself enough that he could reach  
within the vision.  Breathing.  His prescience closed around him.    
He reached into the remainder of the Moment and sifted through  
its faces.  Sandstone, small moulds, plants that lived in  
shallow, damp spaces.  His house with its cache of Jedi life  
hidden under the old clothes and apothecary's tools and his own  
voice whispering through it, repeating Qui-Gon's years of  
admonishments when there was no one else for him to talk with.    
Oils catching the light on the windowsill . . .

The Moment broke and he lost what details he was still grasping  
at.  Settled back into the pattern of his breath and rose out of  
the meditation.

Radiek was gone, and he was curled alone on the table with his  
cloak wrapped around him and a second quilt layered around it.    
His hip burned faintly, and screamed in the tones of raw flesh  
when he moved.  He thought it must be almost morning.

He wasn't tired.  His stillness only lasted as long as he needed  
to heal the skin and assure himself that infection hadn't seeped  
in while he slept.  Then stood and stretched, dressed and padded    
out through the common room to the door.  In the instant before  
he stepped outside, he had a sense of his Master reaching for  
him.  He sent back wordless reassurance and stepped into the  
cold.

In the hard chill, everything had crystallized.  The thin layer  
of snow on the path crunched under his boots and hard bits of ice  
fell from the trees as he brushed them.  He'd been right in  
thinking that it was nearly morning -- there was a rising  
brilliance on one horizon -- but the stars on the opposite edge  
of the sky hadn't faded yet.  Mostly what he had was an  
increasing sense of colour.  As he walked, the shades of the tree  
needles became distinguishable, and he could see iron traces in  
the rock.

The hot springs were more than welcome by the time Obi-Wan  
reached them.  The warmer air closed around him as he stepped  
into the stone hollow, unreasonably hot after the ice-chill he'd  
walked through.  Even when he dropped his cloak and tunics, he  
wasn't painfully cold, only tightly aware of his own skin.    
Feeling its small shivers as he pulled off his boots and leggings  
and folded them onto a stone bench.

The steam felt ecstatically good.  After a moment's thought, he  
reached with the Force and ignited the two nearest fire-bowls,  
letting their glow push towards him.  All of his skin reaching  
for that warmth.

He'd been half-hard since he woke, and he hadn't taken time yet  
to either deal with the erection summarily or will it away.  The  
warm air was smoothly electric now, and he wanted to appreciate  
it.  He settled with his knees spread on the stone and rested for  
a moment, letting awareness creep into the limits of his skin.    
Then brought a hand up and traced his throat, feeling its muscle  
layers and the tightness of the larynx under his fingers.  He  
raised his other hand and ran both over his face, rubbing gently  
from the tips of his brows down to the jawline.

Gravity tugged the stroke farther down, and he left his body  
follow as the fingertips brushed along his clavicle and chest,  
circled the nipples delicately without pinching or even exerting  
pressure.  Steam trailed after each of his movements, small  
disturbances making thinly white swirls in the air.  Thin as  
human breath on his skin while he traced down his ribcage,  
teasing over each bone, and ran the heels of his hands down his  
front until they rested on his thighs, just framing his erection.  
Paused like that, inhumanly still, and let the need for a more  
intimate touch run up him.  Breathing into it.

Obi-Wan was shaking when he finally let his hands fall into the  
hollow of his legs.  He kept one hand there, teasing the skin of  
his scrotum while he stroked along his cock with the other.  So  
good, rubbing along its underside, feeling the hard vein and the  
change in texture as the shaft gave way to the head.  He hissed a  
little when he rubbed one fingertip into the tiny hole at the  
tip.  Raised the liquid he'd collected to his mouth and licked  
it, processed the taste, returned the hand to his flesh and  
stroked harder.  

He let the other hand loose and slid it up to tease the limits of  
his pubic hair.  So good, it felt so good.  He hadn't been able  
to give more than a cursory attention to his body in weeks.  By  
now he was aching for his own attention, having to remind himself  
where his pleasure-centres could be triggered, which touches he  
truly enjoyed as opposed to those that would bring him to orgasm  
most quickly.  More water-warmth on his back as the steam  
thickened and his skin was electric and every touch on his body  
was intimately his own.

When he reached across to brush at his left hip, he found the  
tattoo was a radiant centre.  He touched it and arched back,  
hissing through his teeth.  Bright and sensitive.  Every other  
part of his body connected to that recently-healed patch of skin.    
He rubbed the mark harder in time with the strokes along his  
cock.  Twisted his hips into the movement.  He needed it hard,  
*now*, thrust into his hand and stroked his body, loosed whatever  
flashes of fantasy were lurking in his mind.  Let

//faceless bodies from half a dozen worlds     vivid brown eyes  
from some forgotten vid   veined hands of his first crush as they  
closed over the shaft of a 'saber    solstice kisses    his  
Master's touch in the night stroking comfort into his mind and  
body    touch of the tattoo artist on his naked hip       
brilliance of the Force and his own hands//

the images out and then let them go, felt the Force accept them,  
rubbed hard under his glans and came.

Obi-Wan hissed, swallowing any louder cries reflexively.  He  
couldn't remember half a dozen times in his life that he'd had  
this kind of wonderful privacy to attend to his body, and by now  
the habit of quietness was ingrained.  He stayed there, panting a  
little, with his knees spread, and after a moment dropped a hand  
back to stroke his balls gently as he calmed.

When he was sure of his legs again, he straightened and  
stretched.  White cream on his hands caught his attention, just  
briefly, and before he rinsed the semen away he touched his  
tongue to a drop on the back of his hand.   

//bright bittersalty taste    sharp//  

Then knelt at the edge of the pool and washed his hands, cupped  
water and raised them up, let it fall onto his face and  
shoulders.  The heat-flare that followed that touch rocked him  
even in his almost boneless state.  

He was waist-deep in the water, letting himself drift still with  
his palms just floating on the surface, when Qui-Gon stepped  
around the rock face.  His Master nodded a greeting to him and  
settled on a bench to take his boots off, waving Obi-Wan away  
when he would have come out of the water to help.

"Don't, there's no reason for you to be cold.  I'm quite capable  
of bending over and undoing a few buckles."  He set both boots  
aside and peeled his tunics back.  "I missed you last night,  
Padawan."

Not an accusation, or even a demand for an explanation.  His  
Master's slightly crooked smile offered forgiveness for the small  
wrong of absence.  Invited Obi-Wan to tell where he had been when  
he was ready.  He suspected that his Master knew, and was only  
offering to listen if an ear was needed.  Obi-Wan wasn't sure,  
yet.

Instead, he said, "Yes, Master.  Good morning."  Caught the flash  
of another smile and relaxed into the warmth.

He'd been naked with his Master before, but it struck him  
suddenly how unmarked the man was.  He was crossed with scars,  
but as far as Obi-Wan knew, they were all from combat.  If he'd  
ever chosen to mark himself, those symbols had long since been  
removed, and Obi-Wan was left with a Master who gave away little  
or nothing of himself.  Everything in him buried.  He wondered  
again how someone so private could have chosen him, who wore his  
feelings just beneath the surface of his skin.

The older man stepped into the water and bent his knees, leaned  
back to let his hair soak.  Long muscles on his torso extended in  
the backwards arch and held for a long moment.  Dark hair tracing  
the hollows where the skin stretched over bone.  Obi-Wan had a  
sense that it was snowing again, but the flakes weren't reaching  
the ground.  Colder suddenly, though, and when Qui-Gon  
straightened, Obi-Wan stepped forward into the warm curve of his  
torso.

Big arms came around him and held him there for a minute.  Bright  
skin- and Force-touch along their contact.  Then his Master's  
hands dipped down and caught water, brought it up and let it fall  
along his back.  He reciprocated, warming and washing gently  
without moving away.  

His Master caught his hand, eventually, and raised it a little,  
rubbing over the palm and back, and then the wrist.  He watched  
Obi-Wan's face for something, and he gradually realized that Qui-  
Gon was looking for the as yet unseen tattoo.  Obi-Wan stilled  
for a moment, then drew the big hand into the hollow of his hip  
and rubbed the fingers against it.  Qui-Gon's hand rested on the  
tattoo even when Obi-Wan withdrew his own hand. He waited.

The other arm stayed around him, making a shell against the  
rising cold.  When he shifted next, he felt his Master's face  
press into his hair.  Narrow lips moving in it as he read the  
coiling text by touch.

(*When a man knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of  
quietness, then he is free from fear and darkness, and he feels  
the joy of the light.*)

Gold tracery around the red, delicate breath-measure symbols of  
Brikallan script, only legible to him and the natives and the  
handful of outsiders who knew the written language.  

Qui-Gon dropped a hand to his chin and tilted his face up.    
Kissed his forehead, very carefully, and then his mouth.  Brush  
of a tongue against Obi-Wan's lips, so quickly he almost didn't  
register it.  His arms were still resting on his Master's hips,  
and he didn't think to raise them, so when the older man pulled  
loose, he was away across the pool before Obi-Wan could tighten  
his grip.  He had another flash of the crooked smile as his  
Master dressed, and a moment in which that indigo stare locked on  
him.

"Enjoy the water, Padawan, but keep the hour in mind.  We should  
leave at mid-morning."

He watched the dark shape of the man's cloak sweep around the rim  
of the stone and kept watching after it was gone.  Even in the  
absence of that larger body, he could feel intimacy opening  
between them like fire.

***

The gorge broke open two days' travel south of the snow line,  
and they were wrapped in a country of dark water.  The river  
spread into a delta, there were more boats, and people fishing on  
stilts in the shallows, but even after the shoreline rose, he  
could see the reflections of water-fields and lake strings that  
spread out along the coast.  More salt in the air, though the  
water wasn't yet saline.

Obi-Wan was studying in the stern of the barge when the boatman  
whistled to him.  The sun was only an hour up, and it was still  
cold.  The river water and the ocean in the distance were both  
steaming.  Qui-Gon was standing in the prow, and he opened an arm  
to enfold his student.  Somewhere in the depths of that cloth was  
his Master's body-smell, and bright-sharp sap scent, and wood  
smoke.  The hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder twisted a little so that  
the tips of the two longest fingers could stroke his neck.  The  
other turned his head so that he could focus on the same view as  
his Master and the boatman.

The capital city spread open on one side of the river delta, and  
there were fishing boats coming up to it through the fog.  Behind  
the cliffs, there was the spaceport, as hidden as anyone could  
make it, and no one was flying at this hour.  Instead, there were  
boats, both on the river and on the salt-water basin that it  
poured into.  Warm fingers still traced patterns on his neck.    
Brush of a kiss on the rim of his ear.  On the bay, there were  
huge, low ships with their forward sails swallowing the rising  
light.

  



End file.
